Internet Speed Slow - What Net Neutrality Has To Do With It

In my last article I explained about how you internet speed could be choked or throttled, and even gave you a few reasonable explanations as to why an ISP would throttle a persons internet connection. But there are other reasons for throttling and censorship we didn't cover in that Hub, greed.You see, an internet provider, like Verizon, or AT&T could censor your connection to exclude search results, web applications, and sites from their direct competitors. In other words, if AT&T doesn't like the fact that you avoid paying for text messages by using the Google service (which is free,) then they can just keep your internet connection from displaying the websites that have this application available.

Back in December the FCC implemented some new rules on internet providers that would prevent them from choking your connection speed, and a few other unscrupulous things that ISP's have hinted at in the past, but presently, the rule has been stopped from being enforced by Congress. The Net Neutrality rules will prevent this kind of thing from happening, but earlier this month the House of Representatives voted to throw the rules out. It isn't over yet, the Senate still has to vote on the mandate, and the President has promised to veto any bill that crosses his desk to kill the rules, but the providers are fighting back hard...with money, the weapons that our leaders seem to bow to best.

ISP's in Canada have already admitted to degrading service to some customers, and other companies, one company in particular comes to mind, MetroPCS, has announced plans to block mobile video apps from direct competitors. And, one CEO of an ISP was reported to have said that his company would be happy to provide Yahoo! faster loading and search speeds than Google...if they paid enough. But that's not where the money stopped.

Telecommunication and internet providers have been pouring money into Congressional re-election coffers for the vote of no net neutrality. The members of the House that voted to dissolve this regulation received an average of $27,296 each to convince them to vote the regulation down. Now they are going after the Senators that are on the fence about the regulation. But in spite of their money, they still don't have the White House.

After voting to throw out the rules that the FCC came up with our leaders threw together a set of rules that they claimed that the FCC would have the power to enforce, but many are saying that the rules aren't comprehensive enough, and these aren't likely to pass. The Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act is a republican supported bill that many Democrats in the Senate say the language isn't strong enough. In fact, many are saying that the bill would at least double your cost of internet access.

Even though the bills against the regulation of the providers aren't likely to be passed in the Democratically controlled Senate, the telecom companies are rallying to the cause to squash rules that would let them censor our connections. This site here shows how the money was spent in the House to get the votes they needed to keep their status quo. If one considers the money the corporations have to spend, the only thing the common people have going for us is our numbers...and our ingenuity.

I explained in my last article how you can get around the censorship and throttling using a VPN client like VyprVPN, but if the net neutrality rule gets killed, it's hard to say what will happen with these connections. ISP's could eventually develop methods of slowing, choking, or even preventing these connections from operating correctly. But this also, is not very likely...at least not right away. The telecom companies would need to maneuver everyone into position to be forced to accept this kind of censorship.

But with the future of these rules in question, no matter how doubtful, people need to move now to secure their rights of freedom from censorship. Already telecoms have choked torrent downloads to a trickle, under the auspices of copyright protection. If this censorship continues, the telecom companies will be saying what information is good for you on their internet connection...yes, the one that you pay for. For the time being though, if you want to avoid the choking, speed killing, censorship, I would recommend a service like Giganews, or another Usenet provider that has a VPN client incorporated into their software.

I advocate a smaller government in most cases, and would never support the creation of unnecessary regulations to eat up dwindling government resources, but in a case like this I have to agree with the FCC. And here I have only listed a few ways that this type of censorship of the internet could affect you, but in the long run killing these rules will allow the internet provider a free reign to decide what we do and do not like best.

I've always believed that in the capitalistic society we live in that he wo spends the most wins the election. Kind of like the guy who hosts the party, while he is spending his money and resources on his guests, he's the life of the party. But, the hangover from all the partying the telecoms are providing is yet to come. It's time to tell the chaperones to quit letting this party go on, so call, e-mail, or write your legislators.